April 2000 Volume 81 Number 4 "serving the protectors"
By Andy Dunn

Value Of The Specialist

Brett Williams’ cover story, Peril in the Water, is a further example of the dedication and selflessness of SA cops. It showed beyond doubt that few occupations in this new century are comparable with water police work.

Imagine being woken from sound sleep in the early hours of a freezing winter morning, and within the hour searching a metropolitan river in total darkness for dead human bodies.

Who - without unbridled courage, saintly patience and an extraordinary will to serve - could routinely perform such gruelling tasks?

The Police Journal Editorial has, in recent years, highlighted the similarities between the work of police and the media. Practitioners of each occupation gather information for subsequent presentation in other forums.

Equally, similarities lie between the structures of the police occupation and the medical profession. People with ailments consult their local GPs who refer them to specialists.

People in trouble call upon their local street cops who, if necessary, call in their specialist colleagues.

And overwhelmingly evident from these Water Operations Unit officers’ input is that the community’s need for police specialists is no less vital than its need for medical specialists. Moreover, like their medical counterparts, police specialists are made rather than born.

Be it a Major Crime detective, domestic violence investigator, drug squad officer or police diver, they all sacrifice time, energy - and sometimes even family life - to acquire the skills of their chosen craft.

Even the practice of those skills - as officers’ careers unfold - requires, in many cases, continuing sacrifice, for on-going training and time away on investigations and assignments throughout the State.

All police specialists are owed a debt of gratitude by the communities they serve. The jobs they perform could not be successfully undertaken by anyone without their high levels of expertise and enthusiasm.

The Police Journal congratulates all Water Operations Unit members on their work.

Honour The Fallen

Many serving and retired South Australian police have proud histories of war service. As Dorothy Pyatt wrote in Lest We Forget, some used indefinite departmental leave to make their forays into the world’s battlefields during last century.

Sadly, their police backgrounds made them no less vulnerable than diggers of non-police origins, and cops who gave their lives were lost to the police family as well as their own.

The Police Journal holds in the highest regard all Australian police who served, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

It also encourages community members to join those who will honour the fallen at the SAPOL ANZAC Memorial Service at Fort Largs on Sunday, April 16.

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